by Rob Zombie
There was only a single room, a long beaten metal trough running down the center of it. The trough was heaped with dry sticks and tinder. Affixed at intervals within it were wooden posts. To these were bound the members of the coven, sometimes alone, sometimes two to a post, all of them tightly gagged. They were positioned to face a forged metal throne. It had jagged spikes in place of the seat and arms and straps to hold the condemned in place. The spikes and the metal itself were stained reddish brown with dried blood. The accused were made to sit on the chair, gently at first, the spikes pricking the skin and making it bleed, and then the straps were drawn tight and as the accused screamed and cried and begged for mercy the spikes were forced deeper and deeper. It was the Chair of God, though what went on in it could hardly be considered godly. Yet sometimes, Hawthorne told himself, you had to inflict suffering if you were to cleanse this mortal coil of sin and perdition.
Beside him stood Judge Mather, a sheaf of papers in his hand, his death’s head mask still on but rolled back now to reveal his face. Hawthorne wore his the same way—it was tradition, a way of acknowledging that the witchfinder and the judge were one and the same. These were, Hawthorne knew, the charges. Always the same, only the names having changed. He knew what was coming, remembering from the last time the plague had struck: Found guilty of commerce with the Devil. Condemned to death by the very fire that shall be your eternal dwelling in the Hell that you have embraced and that awaits you to consume you.
It was very late, hours past midnight but still well shy of the beginnings of morning light. But Mather had insisted that the trial be held that same night, immediately, before the witches had a chance to gather themselves and call evil down upon the town. Hawthorne, having felt Margaret Morgan’s power, had to agree. This was a coven to be reckoned with. Better if they were done away with directly, before they could do any further damage.
Still, wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning, to consider all afresh and with clear eyes in the daytime? Wasn’t the night the Devil’s favorite haunt, and did not God rule with the iron hand of justice in the cold light of day?
But what was done was done, Hawthorne told himself. The trial had begun. There was no stopping it now.
Beside him, Mather cleared his throat and began to read, his voice stentorian and charged with holy indignation.
“To the honor of Salem, Massachusetts, be it this day of sixteen September sixteen ninety-two. Clovis Hales, Mary Goodwin, Abigail Hennessy, Sarah Easter, Martha Bishop, and Elizabeth Jacobs, you stand guilty of granting permission to Satan…”
His voice dipped for a moment when he said the unholy one’s name. When he continued, his voice was more solemn, less thunderous.
“… and other unholy spectral beings to be engaged in unholy alliances with such apparitions upon your specific persons.”
Before them the bound witches struggled and tried to cry out through their gags, their eyes dark and angry with displeasure. Hawthorne’s gaze moved from angry face to angry face. No, he thought, there is no remorse here. There shall be no forgiveness either. They shall all rot in Hell.
“Therefore,” Judge Mather continued, “the accused are deemed self-afflicted to the crimes of witchcraft and accepting the Devil.”
This was Hawthorne’s cue. He took up a basin of water beside him and stepped forward. It was pure spring water, gathered fresh each day and prayed over by the Worthy to be an instrument of God’s will. Not exactly the holy water that the Catholics used, for that would be idolatry, but consecrated nonetheless and purified of the mixture of sin and filth that threatened all things. With his hand, he splashed the first witch in the face, watched her recoil in horror. He was of two minds about it: Was it simply the cold of the water that made her recoil? Or was it the purity of it, the fact that it was about as far distant from the Devil as mortal substance could be.
“In the Name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord,” he prayed, “we drive you from us, whoever or whatever you may be. We command you to depart, unclean spirits, all satanic minions and powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions!”
He moved on to the next witch, splashed her as well, careful not to get water on the tinder, careful to do nothing that would prevent her from catching fire later. He continued forward, splashing each witch and uttering his prayer, until he came to the end of the line and to Mary Goodwin. She was so young, barely thirteen, still a child. Hawthorne could not believe that she hadn’t been led into temptation by one of the other women. Perhaps there was a spark here of goodness, something that he could blow on and fan into a flame that would lead to her salvation after this life.
When she saw him looking at her, her angry eyes went soft and pled with him. She tried to say something, but whatever she said was lost within her gag.
“Young Mary,” said Hawthorne. “You have cared for my very children in their hour of sickness. Is there anything you would like to say before God, angels, and these witnesses, my child? Now is the time to make your peace with Heaven and Earth.”
Mary nodded, her eyes still pleading. At last, thought Hawthorne, one who desires salvation. Carefully, he set the basin of water down on the ground. Behind him, he heard Mather call his name in warning, but he ignored it. He reached over the metal trough and around Mary’s neck, then loosened the gag and pulled it from her mouth.
When he stepped away, she smiled at him sweetly, and then in an instant her face was contorted and shouting and she was screaming.
“Satan, save us!” she screamed. “Save us from this world of misery! Bring us home to the glory of your everlasting love! I will die for you, O great master of darkness!”
Hawthorne was flooded with disappointment, which was quickly transformed into righteous anger. “Silence!” he shouted. “Silence!” He slapped the girl once, hard, and then crammed the gag into her mouth until she was almost choking and then tied it tightly behind her head.
He was just finishing, just beginning to calm down, when the iron-bound door swung open with a boom. He turned to see the Magnus brothers, cleaned up a little now. As was customary, Virgil still wore his mask, though like Mather and Hawthorne, he had pushed it up to reveal his face. Dean’s face was bare, his scorched and flindered mask hanging in tatters from his belt. They entered pushing a wheeled metal cage crudely in the shape of a human. Inside was Margaret Morgan. Here was the ringleader, here the high witch who had led all these other women astray, who had removed so many souls from God’s presence and introduced them to their own perdition.
“Bring the witch to me,” Judge Mather said.
They pushed her forward, the crude wooden wheels squeaking beneath the weight of the cage. Her face was bruised and bloody. She’d been beaten. Once again the Magnus brothers had exceeded their authority.
And worse still, Hawthorne realized, she was no longer wearing a gag. Even caged as she was, unable to move her arms to practice her incantations and spells, Morgan was a dangerous woman. He turned to Mather to recommend she be gagged before they proceeded, but Mather, caught up in his just role, was already moving forward.
“Margaret Morgan,” Mather stated solemnly, “I find you guilty of witchcraft, sorcery, and conjuring the very Devil himself for the purpose of eternal fornication with the darkness. Bow your head and admit your crimes, and acknowledge Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”
From within the cage, Morgan barked, her bruised and broken face twisting into a grimace. It took Hawthorne a moment to realize that she was smiling, that her barking was laughter.
“I reject your false God!” she said. “I worship the only true savior: Lucifer—the God of this world, the Father of Lies, the glorious Prince of Darkness.”
Expecting no less, Judge Mather nodded curtly. “You shall be held by the Chair of God until such time as the demonic presence has been driven from your body,” he said.
What was to follow Hawthorne did not relish. The screams of the damned woman as the spikes would penetrate her flesh and as she would beg for me
rcy until the moment when she was either left to die in slow agony or renounced Satan and his works and was given mercy by being killed quickly.
Mather had begun to turn away when Morgan hissed something. When he turned back to hear her, she spat in his face. But it was not ordinary spit, Hawthorne saw, but a black liquid, the vile substance of the pit. Mather stumbled back, clawing at his face, trying to wipe it off, clearly very frightened, perhaps even in pain.
“Enough!” said Hawthorne, feeling righteous indignation rising again within him, along with a certain amount of dread. Every moment that Margaret Morgan was allowed to live was an indignity to God, and put their lives at risk. “Commend her to the chair!” he shouted.
The Magnus brothers smiled. Virgil unlocked the cage and pulled it open. Dean reached in and grabbed Morgan and hauled her out. The cage clanged shut and together the brothers dragged the struggling Morgan toward the chair. She scratched and bit and nearly broke free. Then Dean, like a bear, cuffed her on the side of the head. For a moment she was dazed. He smiled.
“The Chair of God will break the fight of Satan in this one,” said Dean to Hawthorne, noticing his stare. Yes, thought Hawthorne, if past experience held true, it probably would.
Morgan still resisted, but now focused her energies less on breaking free and more on trying to meet the eyes of the other members of the coven.
“Sisters,” she said, “let the love of our blessed father set you free.” She struggled, and when she spoke again, it was not to the coven but staring at the meetinghouse floor. “Satan,” she cried, “release me! I am yours to bleed! Take me!”
The brothers held her now before the chair, one to either side of her. She was ready for the chair, but Hawthorne suddenly realized that something had changed. Morgan was no longer Morgan. Or rather, she was Morgan but also something else at the same time. Her face was transformed, her defiance coupled now with a dark contempt and confidence. There was no hint or trace of fear in her. She had made her body a vessel for the unholy one, and he was there within her now, insinuating himself into her flesh, testing her, feeling the limits and confines of her body. The brothers had not noticed. They stood holding her immobile, laughing at her suffering and enjoying themselves. Even Mather, normally so perceptive of the presence of evil, had not noticed, caught up as he was in his role as a judge. But Hawthorne could feel it. He knew.
There, trapped between the two brothers, on the verge of the torture that was the chair, she stood and laughed. But the laughter that came out of her throat was not hers—was not even a woman’s laughter. It was dark, deep, and hollow and seemed to Hawthorne to issue from the very depths of Hell. He could feel within it the screams of a thousand consumed souls, the suffering of the damned. He could feel a demon clasping a young priest’s head with one hand, sinking his bloody nails through his skin and deep into his skull and then hurling him into the abyss. He could feel a grim group of three men as they held a newborn child over a fire and slit its throat, the gap in the neck like a malevolent smile that grew broken and spread in a bloody sheet down its chest. He could feel a devil’s careful flaying away of the skin of a Pharisee, the awful weight of Judas’s betrayal, and many more tortures besides. But worst of all, he could feel in it the sound of all his own sins, small and large, the way the laughter called them from where he had pushed them down and hidden them within his brain, pretending they did not belong to him.
Judge Mather was shouting, his face dark red. “Remove her rags! I shall not have even the thinnest veil impede the righteous pain of the chair!”
Hawthorne nodded. God must penetrate deep into her flesh to find passage into her blackened soul. The Devil must be driven out and allowed no other body as a new proxy, and then the tainted flesh that had welcomed his dominion must be destroyed.
Dean had moved behind Morgan now. He held her in a headlock, lifted slightly off the ground, as Virgil tore the scraps and rags away from her body. Beneath the rags she was bruised as well, her thighs bloody. From the Devil? wondered Hawthorne fleetingly. Or from the Magnus brothers?
Suddenly the torches flickered and guttered, a wind rushing through the room. For a moment Hawthorne thought the door had been left open, but no, it was sealed. And then he realized with a shudder that the wind seemed to emanate from Morgan herself, rushing and swirling all around them. He felt it snatching and grabbing at him, tearing at his clothing. The bound and gagged witches writhed as if in ecstasy.
When Morgan again spoke, it was in the same voice as the laughter, a deep and hollow, demonic voice. She was looking right at him as she spoke, her eyes steady.
“Come to me, dear Hawthorne,” she said. It said. “You have always desired to serve me.” He could hear the voice grating within his skull, as if it were being uttered inside of his head.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” he said.
Morgan laughed. “Lick between my legs and taste the vile stench of your daughters!” she said. “For they shall belong to me as well.” The demon was trying to provoke him, he knew, but even knowing this he found it difficult not to allow the anger to rise within him. And she knew it, he could tell. She looked him straight in the eyes, licked her bruised lips, and said, “Lick me as you pray to the cock of your false God!”
“Enough!” said Hawthorne, outraged. “Put this whore of Babylon in the Chair of God!”
“Gladly,” said Dean, and he and Virgil threw her back into the chair, pushing her down hard into the seat. The sharp metal spikes cut deep into her legs and buttocks, blood already beginning to drip from the seat and onto the floor.
“Give me more!” said Morgan in her devil’s voice. “I bleed for you, Lord Satan! My whole body bleeds to welcome you!”
“Bind her tight,” said Dean to his brother. “The Devil is a wicked craftsmen and a keen trickster, and he will have at us if he can.”
Together the two brothers bound Morgan’s chest, neck, and arms to the chair with the thick leather bands. They grunted and pulled them as tight as they could, driving the spikes deeper into her legs and arms.
And yet Morgan seemed to welcome the pain. She did not scream. She even smiled and pushed against the straps to force the spikes deeper into her flesh.
“Hawthorne,” she said in her hollow voice. “Yes, destroy the flesh of this my servant. Her blood and her body are the unholy sacrament that will bring about her revenge upon you! With each spike thrust into her flesh, you inflict pain upon you and yours.”
“No more, vile demon, no more!” cried Hawthorne.
The others had finally realized something was wrong. Virgil and Dean were no longer laughing, their faces having grown taut and frightened. Mather, too, had taken a step back. He seemed to be hesitating, unsure of what to say or do.
Morgan hissed. “Revenge will be ours!” she screamed in her unholy voice. “The descendants of this town of Salem will fall to my power! I will rape the children of your children… I will claim them as my own, whores into eternity!”
Slowly, impossibly, the heavy chair rose, creaking, from the floor. It hovered there, a few feet off the ground. Virgil and Dean, terrified, tried to drag it back down, but it refused to come. Virgil let go and reached out to clasp his hands around Morgan’s neck.
“The Devil is here!” he cried. “The Devil has—”
Suddenly he let go and dropped to his knees, clutching now at his own throat. He tried to gulp in air, but somehow couldn’t get anything in. His hands scrabbled at his own throat, tearing at his own flesh, trying to tear away an unseen assailant. And then his own hands locked tight around his windpipe and began to squeeze.
Dean rushed to help him, prying at his fingers, battling to pull his hands away, but the grip was as firm as iron and though he could loosen it momentarily, he could not break the hands away.
“I can’t breathe…,” Virgil said in a suffocated voice. “I… I…”
He began to choke. Blood spilled from his mouth, long, dark strands of it.
“Virgil!” sh
outed Dean. “Virgil!” He turned to Hawthorne, his face full of panic for his brother. “Hawthorne!” he said. “The demon has entered his body! The demon is destroying his soul!”
That Virgil could be possessed by the demon suggested what Hawthorne had long known, that though he served good, Virgil’s heart was far from pure. Hawthorne fell to his knees, raised his eyes to the heavens, and began to pray aloud. What else was there to do? Would God listen to them? Would he save them?
“Lord hear me!” he said. “Purge our brother Virgil from this Bringer of Death! Set us free from these serpents of Hell that have invaded our beloved Salem!”
“Sisters!” said Morgan to the coven, her voice no longer imbued with the demonic tones that had overtaken it but once again her own. “We are the true believers! The true masters shall return to avenge us! We shall live again!”
Mather kneeled beside him, joining Hawthorne in prayer. Near the Chair of God, Dean still fought to save his brother. He broke several of Virgil’s fingers, but Virgil would not let go of his own neck, and even the broken fingers continued to cling to his flesh.
“In the name of the creator of the world,” Hawthorne and Mather repeated together, “the king of kings, I command you to kneel before the power of God! Kneel before the power of God… Kneel before the power of God!”
Morgan laughed. “We would not kneel, even were we free to do so. We shall not submit to your false, weak God. He is worthy only of contempt.”
Hawthorne and Mather ignored her words, continuing to chant, over and over again, “Kneel before the power of God.” Hawthorne heard Dean cry out and he let his gaze fall from the heavens an instant to see Virgil gasp for his final breaths, his chest heaving but still unable to bring any air in.